Alicent Hightower made a shocking offer in House of the Dragon‘s season two finale. After a lifetime of service and a fatal deathbed misunderstanding, the Queen Dowager wanted the war to end. In exchange for the crown, Rhaenyra just had to grant Alicent and her daughter Helaena the freedom to live peacefully. In House of the Dragon‘s third season, Rhaenyra was eager to accept even if her advisors feared a trap. Were they right? Or was she finally able to claim the Iron Throne? In season three’s second episode, we got our answer.
Rhaenyra’s small council did not share her faith in Alicent’s offer. For a brief moment it wouldn’t have mattered if they did. The Queen was bedridden with grief following the death of her son and heir, Jace. She only got out of bed when her husband Daemon arrived and told her he’d learned about Aegon the Conqueror’s White Walker prophecy. That was enough to stir her to action, which she took once learning Aemond had left King’s Landing on the back of Vhagar.
Her advisors still worried she was walking into a snare, but Rhaenyra did not care. She said she would either claim the Iron Throne or die trying. Dressed in black scale armor, she led the way to King’s Landing on the back of her golden dragon, Syrax. Daemon on Caraxes, Ulf on Silverwing, and Hugh on Vermithor flew with her. The sight of four dragons sent the people in the capital rushing to the city gates. Meanwhile, Green forces quickly laid down their swords and knelt to Rhaenyra when she arrived.
The Queen and Daemon then walked through a mostly abandoned Red Keep. Alicent had worked to make sure no Green soldiers would stand against Rhaenyra and mostly cleared the castle before trying to escape the city unseen with Helaena and little Princess Jaehara.
As Rhaenyra and Daemon walked through the castle alone (yes, alone for some reason), they encountered little resistance. Daemon easily cut down the few Green soldiers who did oppose them. It wasn’t until the two reached the throne room that any real force tried to stop them. Kingsguard knight and Alicent’s protector, Ser Rickard, led a small Green force to stand before the Iron Throne. He laughed when Rhaenyra pulled her sword to fight alongside Daemon, but he wasn’t laughing when Ser Luthor Largent entered. The City Watch Lord Commander and his men stood alongside Daemon, the prince who’d given them their Gold Cloaks almost twenty years ago.
The City Watch then took Rickard and the Green soldiers prisoner so Rhaenyra could claim the Iron Throne. She refused to take the Conqueror’s chair until she took the head of her half-brother Aegon, but he had long fled the Capital. While Rhaenyra waited for Daemon to find Aegon, she thanked her now-freed supporters, those who’d remained loyal to her, in the throne room.
Like all the Greens, Grand Maester Orwyle honestly didn’t know where Aegon had gone. He instead saved his own neck with some quick words and by offering up Lord Jasper Wylde’s head instead. Daemon accepted. He swiftly decapitated the Green council’s Master of Laws after Rhaenyra sobbed her way through a slow, painful execution of Otto Hightower. The missing former Hand had been secretly imprisoned in the black cells by Ser Larys Strong before the Clubfoot fled King’s Landing with Aegon. Daemon told his wife, by swinging the sword herself, she would finally become Queen.
Her first attempt missed. Otto groaned from the pain. Then she finished the job and took the Iron Throne as the captured Alicent and Helaena were brought before her to see what had happened to Ser Otto.
Alicent’s plan worked, but only for Rhaenyra. And even then it only partially worked for the new ruler of King’s Landing. The Dowager Queen did not get what she wanted. Alicent and Helaena failed to escape and it seems impossible Rhaenyra can just let them go now. Meanwhile, although the new Queen now sits on the Iron Throne, her usurper half-brother remains at large. The whole point of taking the Iron Throne was to end the Dance of the Dragons. Instead, the Fall of King’s Landing didn’t end this civil war or succession the way any queen wanted.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
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This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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